Nigel farage

Now that Newark is a no-go, Nigel Farage will be turning his thoughts to where he will stand as an MP. He said this week that returning its first MP will be a huge breakthrough for Ukip, so choosing a seat that he can win is vital. After declining to stand in the 15 by-elections that Ukip have contested since 2010, it looks as if Farage will wait until 2015 to run for Parliament. Coffee House understands that, ideally, Farage would like the seat to fit three criteria. Firstly, it needs to be a marginal seat. Secondly, he wants to have some local connection — he feels his lack of

On location for The Sunday Times in the exciting by-election town of Newark-upon-Trent, I asked a nice local woman about her voting intentions. What way do you think you’ll be voting, I asked. This is what she said. “Um, yes, the poll. Well, I will turn right out of my house and walk down the road and then there’s usually a what-do-you-call-it, poll thing, in St Leonard’s Church, on the corner. I think that’s right..” I just thought I’d share that response with you. It is interesting that the leader of UKIP. Nigel Farage, who is of course somewhat Eurosceptic, apparently believes that contesting a poll for election to the

Nigel Farage told me on Monday how closely he was watching the situation in Newark. He introduced the subject by saying, “there’s one other thing that could change everything”. But Farage’s comments to me yesterday make me think that he’s unlikely to stand in Newark. He said that he’d ‘been looking at candidates’ and mused on how just one MP would make such a difference. He pointed to how the Canadian Reform party had won a seat in a by-election in 1989 and then go on to become the largest opposition party in at the next election. What struck me about this anecdote was how taken Farage was by the

You don’t mean a thing if your seat ain’t a swing. As this saying goes, political campaigning in safe seats is usually a thankless task — unless you are Nigel Farage. Last week, he managed to pack out The Sage concert hall in ultra-safe Labour Gateshead for Ukip’s biggest ever-public meeting. By going back to the simple idea of touring the country (even the sceptical parts) and giving speeches, Farage is appealing directly to the voters left behind by the other parties. He told the 1,200-odd assembled crowd of my fellow Geordies: ‘We are here to say that Labour used to stand up for the people in this region, but

Despite a week of rather bruising media coverage, Ukip has moved into first place for next month’s European elections. For the second time this year, Nigel Farage’s party has overtaken Labour. According to poll by YouGov for the Sunday Times, just three points currently separate Labour and Ukip — still touching the margin of error: [datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/aVjwf/index.html”] Although Labour and Ukip may continue to swap places over the next few weeks, today’s poll also suggests Ukip voters are more likely to turn out on polling day. When asked from 0 to 10 the likelihood of turning out on polling day, 48 per cent said they definitely would — 34 per

At the start of the year, some of the air seemed to have gone out of the Ukip balloon. The party’s warnings about the scale of Romanian and Bulgarian immigration to Britain hadn’t been borne out by events. But the debates with Nick Clegg enabled Nigel Farage to get his momentum back. In those debates, Clegg was too passive in the first one and then over-compensated in the second with the result that he ended up losing both of them. Clegg’s decision to not engage with Farage in the first debate meant that he missed his best chance to get under the Ukip leader’s skin. Strikingly, Farage admits to Decca

‘Twenty-six million people in Europe are looking for work. And whose jobs are they after?’ asks the Ukip poster for the euro-elections, beside a Lord Kitchener-style pointing finger. Obviously, Ukip thinks the answer is ‘Ours’. But this isn’t true. Twenty-six million people are not looking for British jobs, but for jobs in general. And even those who do want jobs in Britain are not trying to take jobs from people who have them (though this might sometimes be the effect): they just want jobs. If Ukip is opposed to unrestricted EU immigration, it should direct its anger at the politicians who support this policy, not at the blameless people who,

Is Britain still a Christian country? There is no straightforward answer to that question, as David Cameron discovered to his cost this weekend. The ongoing row began with an article the Prime Minister wrote for the Church Times last week, arguing that Britain should not be ashamed of its Christian ethos: ‘I believe we should be more confident about our status as a Christian country, more ambitious about expanding the role of faith-based organisations, and, frankly, more evangelical about a faith that compels us to get out there and make a difference to people’s lives’ In response to this, fifty notable public figures — from Tim Minchin to Terry Pratchett

Nigel Farage’s strategy for winning the European Elections is based around winning over blue collar workers who normally vote Labour. Ukip believe that they can use immigration as a battering ram to break through Labour’s defences in the north. One of the party’s campaign billboards unveiled last night simply says, ’26 million people in Europe are looking for work. And whose jobs are they after’. (I suspect that Ukip will welcome the controversy these posters are attracting because it will help amplify their message) Ukip’s argument is that it is the only party that can actually do something about immigration. Its logic is simple: as long as Britain is in

Nigel Farage is feeling the heat after saying that the electricity bill for his 620 square foot office is over £3,000. According to Consumer Futures, the average household dual-fuel energy bill is £1,200 and that is for an average 1,042 square feet home, so one can see why he’s under pressure. Farage went on to say that he runs lots of ‘machines’ in his tiny office. Henry de Zoete, the bright spark former special adviser to Michael Gove turned co-founder of energy campaigning group The Big Deal, points out an open goal to Mr S: ‘Like millions of Britons, Nigel Farage is being ripped off by the Big Six energy